Tag: memory

The Eulogy Method is Bunk

~ cafebedouin

“It might sound morbid, but it’s worth beginning with the end in mind. Specifically, your funeral. Simply ask yourself: “What would I feel good about someone saying in my eulogy?” Think about what you’d like a family member, a close friend, a distant relative, or a co-worker, to say at your funeral.

This method helps us understand the question of “What do I value?” from other people’s perspective. At your funeral, even your co-workers would be unlikely to say, “He helped us close lots of million-dollar deals.” They’d talk about how you were as a person—your relationships, your character, your hobbies. And they’d talk about the positive impact you had on the world, not how much money you made for your employer.

Now apply what you’ve learned to your life today. What does the life you want people to remember in a few decades mean for the life you should build now? So having started in this cheerful place, let’s bring things a little closer to home.”

-Nir Eyal, “The Ultimate Guide to Unstoppable Motivation.” nirandfar.com. December 26, 2023

The problem with the eulogy method is that it starts with the assumption that the perceptions of others are what motivate you. Perhaps I am unusual in this way of thinking, but funerals are for the living. It is to help the living come to terms with a hole that has been cut into their lives by the sudden absence that a death brings. It’s not for the dead.

In most instances, funerals are a lie told to comfort the living. It focuses on the good qualities of the deceased. It ignores the bad qualities. It is based on other people’s perceptions, which are shaped by their own narratives. It has no bearing on the truth.

Let’s reframe this suggestion. Let’s imagine that you are the last in line. When you die, there will be no one to bury you. No one that remembers anything you did. There is no external source that is going to validate your choices. What will you do then, when you have no legacy, no long term significance?

That’s a lesson worth learning. Each of us is nobody, going nowhere. Even Shakespeare, and his writings, will eventually be lost in time. But, we can experience Shakespeare now. The fact that Shakespeare will be gone, in the future, does not detract from the fact that we can read what he wrote now.

I think this is true of everyone. It’s all theory of visitors. We have this moment. We have this shared time together. Can we not value the moment, without having some idea about producing something, turning an encounter into a statement about our beliefs and values? The whole eulogy frame is broken, a railroad track guiding you not to real values but to a predetermined number of ways of living that ultimately depend on projecting a persona, a false self.

Is it not better to think there isn’t a self, or at least if there is one, one without any consequence?

Online Techno-Polymath Guy

~ cafebedouin

“I was discussing with Sam the “genre,” so to speak, of the Online Techno-Polymath Guy. You know this guy. He (and it’s usually a he) has his own website, probably hand-crafted in Kirby, Github, or WordPress, as well as a well-regarded, personable Twitter presence. 

He keeps track of everything he reads, writes pithy blog posts on esoteric subjects. His personal philosophy is progressive with a futurist bent.  He has worked in a variety of fields, though you are unsure what he actually currently does for a living. He is knowledgeable, authoritative, but eccentric, which you can tell by the fun colors he’s used to design his fun little homepage. 

You can have fun clicking around his carefully maintained archive, witnessing the dynamic interplay of his disparate areas of interest. You can ooh and ahh at his reading lists, his quirky, inventive stances on issues like quantum computing and social media moderation. 

It’s all very inspirational.”

-Allegra Rosenberg, “Fear of the Archive.” tchotchke.substack.com. July 29, 2020.

When I read this, I thought I’d probably met the definition of this archetype for this person. Then, he goes on to say this.

“Better to be inconstant in one’s archiving (or forgo it completely) than to constantly be faced with the dirty dishes, the nauseating, living ‘matter’ of one’s past interests, pasts opinions, past genius lying guilelessly buried under strata of increasing idiocy.”

The weird thing about keeping a daily blog like this one is it is a process and a bit of a discipline. Here it is on Saturday morning, and I’ve nothing on my blog for the day. What do I do?

I have a Wallabag list that I put everything interesting I came across – in newsletters, RSS feeds or from wherever. I just look for something especially interesting or that I’d like to make a short statement about or would like to remember. Curation, and sharing of the things you think are interesting in this moment is a kind of love, a sharing of oneself.

The audience for these blog posts is the future me. It’s capturing a moment, and in some future moment, stumbling across it while looking for something else, I don’t think past me is some brilliant standard I’m no longer living up to. More often than not, I’m looking at the flaws, mostly spelling and formatting mistakes, and correcting them.

You see, future me remembers some of what it was like to be past me. There are wisps of memory of that particular moment, where I wrote something or did something, but much of it gets lost. But, being able to read these bits helps me to remember. Helps me to see how I’ve grown and changed. Whereas without taking the moment to write the post, it would be forever lost, like salt in the ocean.

Memory flavors everything, but it is its own kind of experience. It is always flawed and incomplete, like trying to see ocean salt when you can only taste it.

When I look at this blog, I see a few really good things. But, most of it is very mediocre. But, Sturgeon’s Law reigns everywhere. It doesn’t have to be good. I’m allowed to say dumb things – past, present and future – because I’m a flawed human being. And, every once in awhile, there’s gold in this swill bucket. But, you never get a chance to find it if you don’t stir it on a regular basis.

Lower your standards. No effort is lost of wasted. It’s this kind of dialogue, mostly with ourselves, that makes blogging worthwhile. I recommend it to everyone.